Recently we have learned, through colleagues travelling in Guatemala and from the media, about the situation in the town of San Juan La Laguna, also known as Xe’ Kuku’ Aab’aj. We have been in direct contact with representatives of the Maya community, and they have given us access to written accounts, including an anthropological study of the events there, with testimony of residents before their Elders’ Council. Our statement has been checked for accuracy by community leaders.

According to Maya community leaders, the former mayor supported the decision of the people, led by the Elders Council, to exercise its sovereignty and autonomy, when the harmony and peaceful coexistence of the town was affected by Lev Tahor, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect that had settled in the town without the consent of the population and disrespected the culture of the inhabitants, a majority of whom are indigenous. This took place after several attempts at reconciliation with them. Therefore the decision of the residents was that they should leave.

A small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews had been living peaceably in the town for six years, but in 2014, 230 members of Lev Tahor fled Canada, where they were being investigated on serious child abuse charges, and arrived in this small village in the middle of the night, intending to establish a settlement, without consultation, permission or even the knowledge of the town’s leaders.

Community leaders assert that from the moment of Lev Tahor’s arrival, the the newcomers violated the cultural norms of the community, and treated its people with contempt. They began using the town’s limited water supply without paying for it, left trash out in the expectation that the indigenous community would remove it for them free of charge, and took merchandise without paying for it, or insisted on setting their own prices. They complained about and insulted local people’s religious observances, interrupting a mourning ceremony and asking that it be cancelled, because the sounds of the prayers bothered them. When they walked through the town, Lev Tahor men expected indigenous inhabitants to step aside for them, and brushed past them roughly if they didn’t.

All these behaviors violate Mayan standards of mutual respect and courtesy, especially toward Mayan women, and the principles of communal harmony which are the basis for their way of life. The Mayan people of San Juan La Laguna see their community as a family. Their custom is to teach newcomers their principles of coexistence, and help them to harmonize their culture with that of the town. They allow for many mistakes and give new members of the family time to adapt. But the members of Lev Tahor refused to become part of the community, and attempted to impose their own ways, seriously disrupting the public peace and the economy of the town.

Finally, Lev Tahor intended to buy land, bring more members, and establish a large permanent settlement, which would have drastically altered the character of the town, without informing, consulting, or obtaining consent from the council of elders.

As Jews of Color and Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, some of whom are also indigenous, we recognize the actions of Lev Tahor as an expression of settler colonialism, rooted in white supremacy, which we unconditionally oppose wherever it appears, in Palestine, in Puerto Rico, or on indigenous lands from North Dakota, to Amazonia, to the village of Xe’ Kuku’ Aab’aj.

We fully support the right of the people of San Juan La Laguna to maintain sovereignty over their ancestral lands, including the right to insist that anyone living in their community must respect their people and cultural traditions. When Lev Tahor flagrantly violated community standards and appropriated town resources, the council of elders had the right to ask them to go.

We utterly reject Lev Tahor’s accusation of antisemitism and discrimination against the town of San Juan la Laguna and denounce the sentencing of the town’s former mayor to a year in jail for defending his community.

False accusations of antisemitism are routinely used to silence opposition to Zionism, and any criticism of Israeli policies, and to criminalize solidarity with Palestine. Now, Mayan people who were defending their community against aggressive colonial settlers are being accused of persecuting those settlers because they are Jews. Although in this case the settlers are not ideologically Zionists, they are using accusations of antisemitism in the same way, to silence resistance to a land grab, accompanied by cultural and economic domination.

Lev Tahor’s accusation of anti-Semitism is being manipulated by the Guatemalan authorities, not out of any concern for the wellbeing of Jews, but in order to undermine indigenous leadership in a town on the shores of Lake Atitlan, an area undergoing intensive tourism development by foreign and corporate investors.

This move is part of an ongoing genocidal war on the indigenous people of Guatemala, which first Spain and then the Guatemalan government have been carrying out for five centuries, including the initial Spanish invasion which made the indigenous people into tenants in their own homeland, the neoliberal period in which the military and church confiscated the fertile coastal lands, and forcibly relocated the Native inhabitants to the forests, canyons and swamps of the interior, the so-called civil war, intended to exterminate the indigenous population through a “scorched earth” policy of massacres and the razing of villages, and the current escalation of natural resource extraction, in which the government, at the service of the extractive industries, criminalizes all resistance to the seizure and destruction of land and water, resulting the jailing of many indigenous leaders.

The seizure of their land and resources, disruption of indigenous culture, and attacks on their leaders are a constant for the people of San Juan la Laguna. They responded to an aggressive act of colonial appropriation, not the religion of the settlers.

There is real antisemitism in the world, and it must be vigorously opposed wherever it crops up. But whether to silence all criticism of Israel or support the dispossession of a Maya community it’s unconscionable to manufacture antisemitism where it does not exist, in order to legitimize the domination of other people.

#jocsmconMayas #jocsm4Mayas

We demand that the Guatemalan government drop all charges of antisemitism and abuse of power against Antonio Adolfo Perez y Perez and stop all persecution of the indigenous leaders of San Juan La Laguna. We declare our solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Guatemala in their struggles for their sovereignty.

Join us in these demands by writing to Ambassador Manuel Espina at info@guatemala-embassy.org

We are Jews of Color, Sephardi, Mizrahi, and other Minoritized Jews organizing for justice in Palestine and the transformation of our communities. We are organizing in partnership with Jewish Voice for Peace.

Unruly is an intersectional blog created and operated by members of the Jews of Color and Sephardi/Mizrahi (JOCSM) Caucus organized in partnership with Jewish Voice for Peace. Our focus is on racial justice issues in the United States, Palestine, Israel, and beyond.